Building a healthy and enabling company culture is increasingly becoming a norm for most businesses/organizations to thrive and grow. A strong company culture plays a vital role in contributing to the growth and success of the company and also helps to encourage employee engagement and retention. 

Building and creating a healthy company culture is significantly the duty of a company’s human resources team (HR). This is why they are at the forefront of ensuring that their company/organization has an enabling and healthy culture. 

In this piece, we will share tips on how HR professionals can build a healthy company culture that fosters a conducive working environment beneficial for employee well-being.

What does company culture mean? 

Company culture is a set of values and practices that guide and build an organization, internally for its employees and externally as part of its public image. 

Company culture matters a lot, as it helps to determine how likely a company will attract and retain top talent that shares the same values. 

For a company to build a purpose-driven company culture that aligns the workforce with shared values and vision, there are steps HR professionals can spearhead to ensure this cultural transformation, and they include;

Define and communicate core values: There is no company culture without value. This is why the first step to building a healthy and balanced company culture is to define the organization’s values. These defined values serve as a foundation upon which other aspects of the culture. 

To successfully build a strong company culture, HR professionals should collaborate with company leaders to identify principles that define the company’s image and guide the decision-making process. 

After successfully establishing the core values, effective communication is crucial. Effective communication helps to ensure that these established values are not just mere words but infused and implemented to blend into the daily operations and decision-making processes. This effective communication can be done through internal channels such as newsletters and employee training sessions to constantly remind employees of the importance of these values in the workplace. 

Align goals with purpose: Behind every healthy company culture lies a purpose. HR professionals should align individual and team goals with the overall company’s purpose. The objective of this alignment is for employees to understand how their contribution and work directly support the company’s mission. HR can immensely contribute to this objective by infusing purpose into performance evaluations, setting clear expectations, and recognizing and rewarding behaviors that reflect the company’s values. 

Additionally, HR can build a purpose-driven company culture by organizing events and activities that bring employees together to contribute to a common cause. Events and activities like community service initiatives and sustainability projects strengthen a company’s culture while encouraging a positive external image of the company. 

Encourage employee input: Building a healthy company culture is not only the concern and duty of HR professionals. Everybody in the organization should contribute to building a healthy company culture. This means the HR team should create room/channels for employees to contribute to the company’s culture through their collaborative input. 

HR can encourage employee input through interviews, focus groups and open dialogue. Engaging and involving employees in this process makes building a company culture a collective effort where team members don’t feel imposed on but reflect the diversity within the organization. 

In addition, HR should also endeavor to seek feedback from employees. With the received feedback, HR can cross-check how well the company is living up to its stated values. Furthermore, this can also help them identify the areas that need improvement.

How to Nurture a Supportive and Inclusive Environment 

The desire to build a stable and healthy company culture won’t work in a chaotic environment. The first step to building a healthy company culture is nurturing a supportive and inclusive environment. 

A supportive and inclusive environment is the cornerstone on which a strong company culture thrives. To create this supportive and inclusive environment, HR professionals have to play a crucial role by implementing the following steps: 

Prioritize employee well-being: The first step to nurturing a supportive and inclusive environment is to guarantee the well-being of the employees. HR teams can achieve this by exploring initiatives that support their physical, mental and emotional health. This can include organizing activities like wellness programs, flexible work arrangements, and access to mental health resources. 

Another way to prioritize employee well-being is for HR to discourage any form of employee burnout and overwork but to encourage and implement activities that enable employees to take breaks/leaves to unplug and recharge before returning to work again. This also contributes to building a healthy culture. 

Include diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives: There is no way HR can build an inclusive culture and environment without committing to diversity, equality and inclusion. HR professionals have a crucial role in creating a diverse workforce by implementing inclusive hiring practices, fostering a culture of belonging, and providing equal opportunities for professional development.

Making training programs open to all employees and leaders, specifically when the program is about cultural competence, helps them understand the importance of diversity and create an inclusive environment. In addition, HR professionals should establish clear channels to enable employees to report and address any form of discrimination or harassment and develop a zero-tolerance policy. 

Open communication channels: Successfully building a company culture requires constant effective communication between the leaders, employees and HR professionals. Effective communication is the backbone of a supportive company culture. 

To achieve this, HR should ensure there is room for open and transparent communication channels throughout the organization. Another way to enhance and improve effective communication is to encourage managers to have open and honest conversations with their teams. 

Here, they should not stop providing constructive feedback but also actively listen to employee’s concerns and understand how to address them effectively. Effective communication creates an environment where employees feel seen, heard and valued. This fosters trust and contributes to a positive company culture. 

How Foster Continuous Learning and Innovation 

Another way to build a strong company culture is through fostering continuous learning and innovation that enables employees to adapt to changing market dynamics and stay ahead of the competition. 

To build a strong company culture, HR can play a role in fostering continuous learning and innovation through;

Investing in training and development

One way for HR to foster continuous learning is to invest in designing and implementing flexible training and development programs that empower and encourage employees to acquire new skills and allow them to stay relevant. HR can achieve this by identifying skills that employees need to level up in and contribute to the organization’s success, thereby providing these employees the opportunity to develop and enhance these skills. 

Also, HR should foster continuous learning and make it a company culture by promoting access to online courses, workshops and conferences. 

Celebrating success and learning from failure

A balanced and supportive culture should be able to embrace and accommodate celebrating success and learning from failure and view both as an opportunity to grow. HR should build a culture of celebrating achievements and milestones, individual or team accomplishments and success. Celebrating success makes employees seen and valued, thereby promoting a positive culture. 

Also, HR should create an atmosphere that makes it easier for employees to learn from failure and view it as an opportunity to learn and grow instead of as an avenue to talk down and punish them.

Essentially, HR immensely contributes to building a strong and healthy company culture through dedication, collaboration and strategic approach. However, it is vital to note that the successful building of a company’s culture does not solely fall under the effort of HR but a collaborative effort of everyone within the organization. 

Cultivating a strong company culture helps to foster the company’s success and growth and creates a conducive environment for employees to thrive. 

Businesses and organizations should also do their part in ensuring their HR professionals and teams excel at building a healthy company culture where everyone is empowered to do their best at work. They can make the workload easier for HR by constantly investing in their HR through organizing training, sharing resources or online courses such as the SAP HR course from heelsandtech. The SAP HR course is an excellent course for HR professionals who want to thrive in their careers.